Dreamline 0
by Cross-Flame
Summary: Meeting a man she hypothesizes to be real is a stretch, so she dreams of him instead.


_**A/N:** it has been three years, now i know how plot works and a whole lot more things. Within that span, i fell into this thing called Steins;gate and the awkward nerd ship of okakuri, so have a thingy where i have no idea to continue or not bleh_

 _"kurisu dreams of someone who probably exists. She'll call him Lab Coat."_

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The whole situation is a soap opera.

Some force causes her to burst into the room, slamming the wooden door aside. She forgets her manners, feet soaked with water from the boots she was supposed to remove in the apartment. She allows the rain outside to accompany the silence, as the redhead simply stares at the man across her, who looks unnerved and vulnerable under those calculating eyes.

Actually, the girl simply needs to breathe before speaking, and the man really is vulnerable...well, has been for a very long time, the girl believes.

His fingers dance in an act of desperation to search blindly for the keyboard behind him, like a mother in danger whose first instinct is to look towards her child. He's come from outside too; the rain has messed up his hair more than it already was in the first place, and his free hand tightly clutches a coat so thin and damp the girl can see his scrawny arms through its long sleeves. He gazes at her out of wariness, like a lab rat confronted by a scientist about to subject it to another of his cruel, curiosity-powered experiments.

After allowing a few pants from both of them, she speaks up.

"You can stop now."

Lab Coat (or so she decides to name him) doesn't speak, but his lips quiver, like he's trying not to. He seems to force himself to refuse Red Boots' offer, shaking his head vigorously. He's on the verge of crying too, but the girl thinks there's nothing wrong with that, in his situation. (As if she knew the guy, huh.)

She takes a step forward.

"Nobody's asking you to do so much."

Lab Coat completely breaks down, tears now freely cascading. His mouth moves, but she hears no sob or word escape his lips. It's as if the world favors the redhead's voice more, but Red Boots decides to ignore how bizarre that is. She walks until they're a few inches away from each other now, his grip on the keyboard tightening. He opens his eyes — sullen, drained, brown ones — but he's still whimpering, although to the woman it's a start to calming him down.

She pulls him into an embrace. "It's okay," she hums to him. "Let me help you."

(Truth be told, she has no idea what she's talking about. Help with what?)

For a while, Lab Coat feels stiff to Red Boots, but he soon lets his shoulders sag, letting go of the keyboard with a sloppy thud on the keys. He lets his arms thoughtlessly slide behind her back, and allows his breathing to slow. Neither of them speak for a long period of time. Perhaps it was simply long in her perspective; the Relativity Theory (somehow) comes to mind.

Lab Coat withdraws first, and Red Boots eyes him with a distant stare as he turns his back on her, attention back to the computer behind him. Ignoring his unkemptness and damp hair, he places a headset over it. She can only hear a sniff from him, which should be bringing her relief for what seems to be him in a more determined mood; instead she feels baseless concern for the scientist and vague anger towards the computer monitor before him. She stands frozen as she hears the klik-klaks of the keyboard keys he types on, unsure of whether she should talk to him about it. She worries, of course. (About a total stranger, that is. And what is "it"?)

Static from the PC eclipses the rain and before Red Boots thinks about how to word her concern, she's greeted with a glimpse of those brown eyes again. Only a glimpse, because by the time she can process anything, she realizes his hands are firmly on her shoulder, and they gently push her closer to him. She feels a heavy pang on her chest, and her eyes feel watery. She

not sure if it's because of her concern for mister Lab Coat, or her still-mysterious frustration towards that damned computer. It makes more sense to her if she's crying out of sheer confusion for the situation, but she somehow is equally convinced her emotions are simply in sync with this man's.

"Don't make me... forget," she manages.

The redhead feels Lab Coat's grip tighten. Once half a second barely passes, he crouches to her level. She forces herself to remember his face; the sincere focus he has on her, the feeling of commitment she gets from looking at his furrowed eyebrows. For some reason, Red Boots believes she won't ever see that face again, so she sends a calculating stare that could easily be translated as a piercing glare. Lab Coat is unaffected by it, too resolved to be intimidated. As she gazes into his eyes, she's careful to not get lost in them, as his voice is finally unmuted and she feels whatever the man will say matters.

"I've done this a thousand times," he begins softly, "but for a virgin like you, I'm sure this'll be very memorable."

A spark of familiar annoyance ignites in her despite her saddened mood, and she finds herself automatically shouting out retorts over the growing loudness of the static. "As if you're an ideal playbo-"

It wasn't an embrace. It was more intimate.

Their lips meeting takes her by surprise, and so does this man's sudden confidence rising immediately from a moment of despair. Her feelings are still a mess. (For another abstract reason, she feels like a memory such as this would give her a lot of pain.) An initial reaction is to sob in front of him; that slowly turns to furious disapproval. A first kiss is one of many memories which leaves a big impact to the hippocampus; the girl is (once again) somehow sure Lab Coat knows that without her telling him. She doesn't complain this style of a confession to him, as she feels that, despite its abruptness, the kiss is chaste and sincere.

But it doesn't feel right to last longer than it does, so Red Boots withdraws. (Is she timing all this? Is this a precise experiment to her?) She looks at her newfound lover with another one of her cold stares, as if nothing happened. She only hopes he fails to notice whatever reaction resulted from warm cheeks.

"...W-what should I do?"

Sparks start emanating from both Lab Coat's headset and computer, but despite its glaringly obvious potential fire hazard, his hand firmly grasps hers. He focuses himself on his companion, expression serious as he wipes a tear on the corner of her eye that was threatening to fall. Red Boots holds her breath, waiting for his answer.

...his lips only move again.


End file.
